Drugs are prescribed in accordance with a doctor's prescription at a pharmacy in a hospital, for example. In prescribing drugs, a pharmacist collects appropriate quantities of predetermined types of drugs in accordance with the prescription. This work is referred to as “picking”.
A system related to picking has previously been proposed, in which a marking on work instructions formed by encoding the articles to be picked, the quantities of the articles, the order of picking, and the like is read with a mobile terminal, and the articles written on the work instructions are accurately collected (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2000-276551 (PTD 1)). Another system has been proposed in which drug prescription data based on a prescription is transferred to a mobile terminal from a computer, and a bar code of drugs read with the mobile terminal is compared with a bar code in the drug prescription data (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2002-236748 (PTD 2)). A yet another system has been proposed in which an appropriate inspection is conducted by comparing prescription data for picking inspection that has undergone a picking inspection, which is transmitted from a mobile terminal, with prescription data for picking inspection created based on the prescription data (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2006-81837 (PTD 3)).
Meanwhile, an apparatus for automatically collecting predetermined quantities of predetermined drugs based on a preset program has been proposed. Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2008-93177 (PTD 4), for example, discloses a drug prescribing apparatus including a sheet-heading mechanism for improving the efficiency of taking out PTP (Press Through Package) sheets packed with tablets.
Since there are several hundreds of types of drugs used at a pharmacy, it is difficult to automatically collect all these drugs stored in an apparatus. At present, therefore, drugs that are used with relatively high frequency are automatically collected, while other drugs are picked from a drug shelf, and a required set of drugs are collected by combining both these drugs. Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 9-192201 (PTD 5) proposes an ampoule collecting method related to such work. In this method, an ampoule dispensing apparatus for automatically collecting ampoules outputs a list of ampoules based on a prescription. The list shows in emphasis drugs that could not be dispensed with the ampoule dispensing apparatus. The ampoules are then manually collected from the shelf in accordance with the list.